


Find Clarity And Take It

by nothing_rhymes_with_ianto



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Cocaine, Drug Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothing_rhymes_with_ianto/pseuds/nothing_rhymes_with_ianto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire can feel himself drifting away, and he needs focus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Clarity And Take It

**Author's Note:**

> Uh yeah this randomly happened. I just started writing off the top of my head and this came out. Also, this is off-topic (ish) but I am working on the next chapter of HOM. It's slow going because I've had about 2 months of writer's block and now that I've started this chapter I know it's going to be long. But it's coming!

Grantaire drums his fingers on the table, eyes darting nervously around. His friends laugh and talk around him. He watches through a film. Enjolras hides a smile behind his hand. Bahorel flicks Courfeyrac across the back of the head, and Courfeyrac counters with a shove, and the collapse onto the ground in a wrestling bundle of limbs. Marius gives an ungainly giggle and smacks his hand over his mouth. Joly flings his hands in the air and brings them down on his thighs with a smack as he laughs. Grantaire watches. He can feel himself growing distant again, foggy, like a fast zoom out on a television screen. He drums his fingers faster. It feels like the wood is echoing under his nails.

”I’m going for a smoke,” he mumbles to no one in particular. Feuilly, who’s sitting to his left, nods but continues watching the combat on the floor. Grantaire sloshes his way outside through the slowing thoughts. The curb at the back alley is dirty but he sits anyway.

He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, but he doesn’t smoke. The box flips through his fingers, the ragged skin around his cuticles catching on the cardboard edges. It thumps hollowly when he taps it against his knuckles. The box goes back in his pocket unopened. His cell phone comes out instead, and he balances it on one knee as he fishes in his pocket.

The powder is easily poured out of the baggie and divided, a dollar quickly rolled (one dollar bill, he’s not classy enough or douchey enough to use anything bigger). He inhales quickly and nearly chokes on his own breath, the price he pays for trying to do this all fast, before anyone comes searching for him. He rubs the back of his phone on his jeans before everything slides back into his pocket.

The Musain is loud now, not muffled, and everything is clear and focused. He grins at Jehan when the man beckons him over, pointing at Bahorel and Feuilly who are enthusiastically arm wrestling and arguing with each other. He sits down with a small laugh and jumps straight into the argument once he’s realize what it’s about.

Grantaire doesn’t do this to get out of his brain. He does it to get back in. Most of the time it feels like he’s running through quicksand in his mind, like his thoughts are tying themselves around his ankles so he trips up every time they start. It’s like his brain is a chalkboard and every time he starts a thought it gets erased before he can really process it. Everything moves in slow motion and super speed somehow and it hurts, and he can’t _think_ because he’s floating somewhere high above his own brain, staring dumbly at the blurry chalkboard where the words have turned to smears. This stuff, though, it focuses him. He’s shot back into his own mind and he can think, his thoughts move at a speed he can understand, with a strange hyperactive clarity that he craves.

He talks. He rambles. He argues and agrees and counters and rebuts. He _thinks_ , all with a grin on his face and fingers dancing on the tabletop. He probably looks manic but he doesn’t care because he can think and he can process and everything is clear and here and immediate and beautiful. He can _think_.

Except when he turns to say something to find Jehan peering curiously at him, and the words stick in his mouth, and he watches as if on slow motion the shape of Jehan’s mouth and the wideness of his eyes as his shoulders sink and two words fall from his mouth like a warning bell. “Oh, shit.”


End file.
